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Unstoppable invasion: How did mussels sneak into California, despite decades of state shipping rules?

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Tuesday, November 26, 2024

In summary Most ships discharging ballast water into California waters are inspected, but state officials have tested the water of only 16 ships. Experts say invaders like mussels are inevitable under current rules and enforcement. After the recent discovery of a destructive mussel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, some experts say California officials have failed to effectively enforce laws designed to protect waterways from invaders carried in ships’ ballast water. A state law enacted 20 years ago has required California officials to inspect 25% of incoming ships and sample their ballast water before it’s discharged into waterways. But the tests didn’t begin until two years ago — after standards for conducting them were finally set — and testing remains rare. State officials have sampled the ballast water of only 16 vessels out of the roughly 3,000 likely to have emptied their tanks nearshore. Experts say stronger regulations are needed, as well as better enforcement. “It’s not really a surprise that another invasive species showed up in the Delta,” said Karrigan Börk, a law professor and the interim director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “It’s likely to continue happening.” Native to eastern Asia, the mussels — detected near the Port of Stockton, in a small San Joaquin Valley reservoir and several other Delta locations — were the first to be detected in North America. If the mollusc evades eradication efforts, it could spread over vast areas of California and beyond, crowd out native species and clog parts of the massive projects that export Delta water to cities and farms. Invasive golden mussels, shown at a California Department of Water Resources lab, might crowd out native species in waterways and clog parts of the state’s massive water projects. Photo by Xavier Mascareñas, California Department of Water Resources Ted Lempert, a former Bay Area Assemblymember who authored a 1999 state law aimed at preventing ships from bringing invasive species into California, said state officials “apparently took their eyes off the ball.” “We were trying to get ahead of the game, so I’m really frustrated that after all these years some of the events we were trying to prevent have come to pass,” he said. But the prospect of an invasive species colonizing a new region frequented by ships “is a numbers game” that can happen even under the most rigorous regulations and enforcement, said Greg Ruiz, a marine ecologist with the Marine Invasions Research Laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. “This is not a failure in the system,” he said. Ballast water is stored in tanks to stabilize vessels at sea. Often taken on at the port of departure and released at the port of arrival, it is a global vector of invasive species, including pathogens that cause human diseases. “We were trying to get ahead of the game, so I’m really frustrated that after all these years some of the events we were trying to prevent have come to pass.”Ted Lempert, former Bay Area Assemblymember To address the threat to ecosystems and water supplies, the State Lands Commission, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard enforce a suite of overlapping regulations. The goal of these state and federal rules is to reduce as much as possible the number of living organisms in discharged ballast water. Vessel operators can achieve this by exposing their ballast water to ultraviolet light, filtering it and treating it with chlorine, which is then removed before discharge. ‘Highest standards in the world.’ But are they enforced? About 1,500 ships a year entering California waters release ballast water, according to Chris Scianni, environmental program manager of the State Lands Commission’s Marine Invasive Species Program. To check for compliance, officials board and inspect nearly all of them, plus another thousand vessels prioritized for inspection for other reasons, Scianni said. During these inspections, officers review ballast water logbooks and reporting forms, interview crew members, inspect water treatment equipment, and occasionally take water samples for testing. “We’re the only entity in the world that’s doing this right now,” Scianni said. A 2003 state law declares that the State Lands Commission “shall take samples of ballast water, sediment, and biofouling from at least 25% of vessels” subject to invasive species regulations. But commission officials told CalMatters they interpret it to mean that 25% of ships must be inspected, with no specific requirements for sampling. Sampling for some ships began in 2023, after the commission enacted standards for how the tests are conducted. It’s a considerable endeavor: A cubic meter of water — which weighs a metric ton — must be collected from a ship. It can take an hour to draw, and it must be done while the vessel is actively discharging. Hours more may pass before results are ready. Federal officials have their own ballast oversight program. It leans on a system of self-reporting by vessel operators — which critics consider a weak tool for ensuring compliance. An EPA spokesperson said the agency “can assess compliance with (the rules) either through a desk audit or an on-site inspection.” Many experts told CalMatters that the state and federal limits on how many organisms are allowed in discharged water are adequate but that enforcement is lacking. “We had the highest (ballast water management) standards in the world, but they were never actually enforced because the state couldn’t come up with a set of technologies to implement them,” said Ben Eichenberg, a staff attorney with the group SF Baykeeper. Ted Grosholz, a professor emeritus with the UC Davis Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute said “the standards are very exacting…The problem we have is compliance. How many ships coming in with ballast water can we really sample and verify? Enforcement officials can’t watch everyone.” “The standards are very exacting…The problem we have is compliance. How many ships coming in with ballast water can we really sample and verify? Enforcement officials can’t watch everyone.”Ted Grosholz, UC Davis Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute Smithsonian’s Ruiz said state records show that all documented ballast discharges at the Port of Stockton since 2008 have followed state regulations. Ships that discharge, however, occasionally remain uninspected as they enter a port. And some vessel operators may cheat, filling their ballast tanks with clean ocean water to pass off a faulty water treatment system as functional. Moreover, even treated ballast water can contain high levels of zooplankton. Ruiz, who has studied California’s data on ship arrival and locations of the mussels, said it’s probable the golden mussel entered the Delta at least a year ago and even possible that it’s been there for a decade or more, adding that “it could even have happened in the pre-treatment (of ballast water) era.” Somehow, the creature slipped through the cracks and made itself a new home in what has been called one of the most invaded estuaries on the planet. It’s an outcome that Lempert as an assemblymember tried to prevent a quarter-century ago, when he authored the Ballast Water Management for Control of Non-indigenous Species Act. The law required incoming vessels to either retain their ballast water, drain it while simultaneously refilling with new water hundreds of miles out at sea, or use an “environmentally sound” treatment system. It tasked the California State Lands Commission with monitoring vessels for compliance. California has since enacted a complex system of regulations: In 2003, the Marine Invasive Species Act expanded the scope of Lempert’s legislation. Three years later, the Legislature required the commission to set limits on organism concentrations in ballast water; these “standards of performance” were implemented in 2022. While the standards allow minute levels of organisms in the water, the goal is “zero detectable living organisms” by 2040. Several federal laws also aim to protect U.S. waters from creatures like the golden mussel. Penalties for breaking ballast management rules have been modest. At the state level, violations have resulted in 24 fines in the past six years, totaling just over $1 million. Federal fines are rare, with just nine penalties issued amounting to about $714,000 in the EPA’s Pacific Southwest region since 2013. Commission officials said “the frequency of noncompliant discharges … has dropped dramatically since our enforcement regulations (with penalties) were adopted in 2017.” Can ballast water be sterilized? California officials say achieving the law’s goal of zero organisms in ballast water discharged into waterways is infeasible. It would require a network of treatment plants at coastal ports, costing $1.45 billion over 30 years. The shipping industry would face another $2.17 billion in costs for installing systems capable of transferring ballast water to the floating treatment plants. But Eichenberg said some ships already use commercially available systems that consistently, and by a wide margin, outperform industry standards. He said the state’s failure to require that vessels use the most advanced treatment systems available — technology capable of nearly sterilizing ballast water — has culminated in the golden mussel’s arrival. “Something like this was bound to happen eventually,” he said. State and federal performance standards — modeled after international standards — limit the concentration of living zooplankton-sized organisms, like mussel larvae, in ballast water before discharge to 10 per cubic meter. For smaller organisms, allowances are higher. But even in ballast water that has undergone treatment in approved systems, zooplankton concentrations can be off-the-charts for reasons not always clear, according to Hugh MacIsaac, an aquatic invasive species researcher at the University of Windsor in Ontario, who has studied the spread of the golden mussel in South America and central China. Golden mussels, measured at a state lab, have been found in several Delta locations. Photo by Xavier Mascareñas, California Department of Water Resources Treating ballast water doesn’t necessarily work. A study in Shanghai found up to 23,000 zooplankton-sized organisms per cubic meter in the ballast water of half of ships sampled, MacIsaac said. Ruiz, at the Smithsonian research center, said the study’s sample size of 17 ships is too small to be representative and that such high concentrations are abnormal in the United States. “We sample vessels here, and that’s not what we see coming into the U.S.,” he said. Ship operators have shifted radically in the past 20 years “from no management to a nearly complete use of open-ocean exchange to, now, an almost complete transition to ballast treatment technology,” Ruiz said. Attention turns to federal rules The federal government, not state agencies, will soon become the key player in ballast management. That’s because new EPA rules, which are likely at least 18 months away from full implementation, will preempt state regulations.The new rules — which state officials will help enforce — will keep the existing standards for organism concentrations, but prevent states from implementing their own rules that exceed federal standards. For example, California’s goal of zero detectable organisms in ballast discharge will be nixed. Nicole Dobrosky, the State Lands Commission’s chief of environmental science, planning and management, said states can petition the federal government for changes to the rules. Shippers welcome the shift to national rules that align with international standards, said Jacqueline Moore, Long Beach-based vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association. “An international industry by nature, the maritime community always appreciates consistent standards across the board, and across the ocean in this case,” Moore said. “It’s much easier for everyone.” “We have the technical ability to efficiently remove or kill organisms that are trapped in a tank of water. For half a century federal law has required EPA to …protect the environment and public health — yet EPA still refuses to do so.”Environmental groups in a letter to Biden But the change of regulatory oversight concerns Marcie Keever, the oceans and vessels program director with Friends of the Earth. She said that to date the State Lands Commission has been the more active enforcer. Preempting state laws with federal standards that she says are too weak “will essentially give the shipping industry a free pass to pollute…These shipping companies are self-reporting pollution instances, and no one is doing anything about it except for the state.” In 1973, the EPA exempted ballast water from the Clean Water Act. Eventually forced by court rulings to comply with the act, the agency released its newest standards in October for limiting organism concentrations in ballast water. Keever said the EPA is not setting the bar as high as it should. “We’re still basically at the same place we were at 20 years ago,” Keever said. “The EPA has never set what we see as the best available technology for ballast water discharges.” More than 150 environmental groups made similar claims in a 2022 letter to President Joe Biden, arguing that the technology exists now to almost entirely sterilize ballast water. “[W]e have the technical ability to efficiently remove or kill organisms that are trapped in a tank of water,” they wrote. “For half a century federal law has required EPA to use that ability to protect the environment and public health — yet EPA still refuses to do so.” The EPA disagrees with the criticism. Joshua Alexander, press officer with the agency’s Region 9 San Francisco office, told CalMatters that “the EPA concluded that these standards (in the new rules) are the most stringent ones that the available ballast water test data can support.” Can anything stop the mussel invasion? October’s discovery of the golden mussel in California is being treated urgently by state and federal officials. The creatures have wreaked havoc on water supply and hydroelectric facilities in South America, and they are spreading rapidly through central China. In the Great Lakes, invasive zebra mussels cause $300 to $500 million in damages annually to power plants and other water infrastructure — the types of impacts officials in California hope to avoid. Tanya Veldhuizen, the Department of Water Resources’ special projects section manager, said officials are considering the use of chemicals to remove the creatures from pumps, intakes and pipelines of the massive State Water Project, which transports water to farms and cities. Several scientists told CalMatters that with most nonnative species, eradication is only possible early in the game — meaning management officials often have one shot at success. Biologist Andrew Chang, who works at the Smithsonian research center’s Marin County field lab, noted an old adage in invasion ecology — containing the spread of a nonnative species is like trying to put toothpaste back into a tube. “The more time that passes, the process of putting the toothpaste back in the tube gets messier and messier,” Chang said. University of Windsor’s MacIsaac thinks California may be on the cusp of an unstoppable mussel invasion. “This is an enormous problem for your state,” he said. More about water ‘Immediate threat’: Mussel invades California’s Delta, first time in North America October 31, 2024November 5, 2024 Prop. 4 passes: Californians approve $10 billion for water, wildfire, climate projects November 5, 2024November 6, 2024

Most ships discharging ballast water into California waters are inspected, but state officials have tested the water of only 16 ships. Experts say invaders like mussels are inevitable under current rules and enforcement.

Aerial view of a large cargo ship docked at an industrial port along a wide river. The ship has a helipad marked with an "H" and is equipped with several open cargo holds. Cranes and industrial equipment are visible on the dock, with storage tanks, warehouses, and other infrastructure nearby. Surrounding the port area are open fields, warehouses, and a network of roads, with a cityscape extending into the distance under a clear blue sky.

In summary

After the recent discovery of a destructive mussel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, some experts say California officials have failed to effectively enforce laws designed to protect waterways from invaders carried in ships’ ballast water.

A state law enacted 20 years ago has required California officials to inspect 25% of incoming ships and sample their ballast water before it’s discharged into waterways. But the tests didn’t begin until two years ago — after standards for conducting them were finally set — and testing remains rare. State officials have sampled the ballast water of only 16 vessels out of the roughly 3,000 likely to have emptied their tanks nearshore.

Experts say stronger regulations are needed, as well as better enforcement.

“It’s not really a surprise that another invasive species showed up in the Delta,” said Karrigan Börk, a law professor and the interim director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “It’s likely to continue happening.”

Native to eastern Asia, the mussels — detected near the Port of Stockton, in a small San Joaquin Valley reservoir and several other Delta locations — were the first to be detected in North America. If the mollusc evades eradication efforts, it could spread over vast areas of California and beyond, crowd out native species and clog parts of the massive projects that export Delta water to cities and farms.

A close-up photograph of several small mussels, some loose on a surface and others arranged in a clear plastic divided dish. A ruler, showing both inches and centimeters, is positioned above the mussels for scale. The mussels have dark, shiny shells, varying in size, and are laid out on a yellowish background. — Invasive golden mussels, shown at a California Department of Water Resources lab, might crowd out native species in waterways and clog parts of the state’s massive water projects. Photo by Xavier Mascareñas, California Department of Water Resources

Ted Lempert, a former Bay Area Assemblymember who authored a 1999 state law aimed at preventing ships from bringing invasive species into California, said state officials “apparently took their eyes off the ball.”

“We were trying to get ahead of the game, so I’m really frustrated that after all these years some of the events we were trying to prevent have come to pass,” he said.

But the prospect of an invasive species colonizing a new region frequented by ships “is a numbers game” that can happen even under the most rigorous regulations and enforcement, said Greg Ruiz, a marine ecologist with the Marine Invasions Research Laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. “This is not a failure in the system,” he said.

Ballast water is stored in tanks to stabilize vessels at sea. Often taken on at the port of departure and released at the port of arrival, it is a global vector of invasive species, including pathogens that cause human diseases.

“We were trying to get ahead of the game, so I’m really frustrated that after all these years some of the events we were trying to prevent have come to pass.”
Ted Lempert, former Bay Area Assemblymember

To address the threat to ecosystems and water supplies, the State Lands Commission, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard enforce a suite of overlapping regulations.

The goal of these state and federal rules is to reduce as much as possible the number of living organisms in discharged ballast water. Vessel operators can achieve this by exposing their ballast water to ultraviolet light, filtering it and treating it with chlorine, which is then removed before discharge.

‘Highest standards in the world.’ But are they enforced?

About 1,500 ships a year entering California waters release ballast water, according to Chris Scianni, environmental program manager of the State Lands Commission’s Marine Invasive Species Program. To check for compliance, officials board and inspect nearly all of them, plus another thousand vessels prioritized for inspection for other reasons, Scianni said.

During these inspections, officers review ballast water logbooks and reporting forms, interview crew members, inspect water treatment equipment, and occasionally take water samples for testing.

“We’re the only entity in the world that’s doing this right now,” Scianni said.

A 2003 state law declares that the State Lands Commission “shall take samples of ballast water, sediment, and biofouling from at least 25% of vessels” subject to invasive species regulations. But commission officials told CalMatters they interpret it to mean that 25% of ships must be inspected, with no specific requirements for sampling.

Sampling for some ships began in 2023, after the commission enacted standards for how the tests are conducted. It’s a considerable endeavor: A cubic meter of water — which weighs a metric ton — must be collected from a ship. It can take an hour to draw, and it must be done while the vessel is actively discharging. Hours more may pass before results are ready.

Federal officials have their own ballast oversight program. It leans on a system of self-reporting by vessel operators — which critics consider a weak tool for ensuring compliance. An EPA spokesperson said the agency “can assess compliance with (the rules) either through a desk audit or an on-site inspection.”

Many experts told CalMatters that the state and federal limits on how many organisms are allowed in discharged water are adequate but that enforcement is lacking.

“We had the highest (ballast water management) standards in the world, but they were never actually enforced because the state couldn’t come up with a set of technologies to implement them,” said Ben Eichenberg, a staff attorney with the group SF Baykeeper.

Ted Grosholz, a professor emeritus with the UC Davis Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute said “the standards are very exacting…The problem we have is compliance. How many ships coming in with ballast water can we really sample and verify? Enforcement officials can’t watch everyone.”

“The standards are very exacting…The problem we have is compliance. How many ships coming in with ballast water can we really sample and verify? Enforcement officials can’t watch everyone.”
Ted Grosholz, UC Davis Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute

Smithsonian’s Ruiz said state records show that all documented ballast discharges at the Port of Stockton since 2008 have followed state regulations.

Ships that discharge, however, occasionally remain uninspected as they enter a port. And some vessel operators may cheat, filling their ballast tanks with clean ocean water to pass off a faulty water treatment system as functional. Moreover, even treated ballast water can contain high levels of zooplankton.

Ruiz, who has studied California’s data on ship arrival and locations of the mussels, said it’s probable the golden mussel entered the Delta at least a year ago and even possible that it’s been there for a decade or more, adding that “it could even have happened in the pre-treatment (of ballast water) era.”

Somehow, the creature slipped through the cracks and made itself a new home in what has been called one of the most invaded estuaries on the planet.

It’s an outcome that Lempert as an assemblymember tried to prevent a quarter-century ago, when he authored the Ballast Water Management for Control of Non-indigenous Species Act. The law required incoming vessels to either retain their ballast water, drain it while simultaneously refilling with new water hundreds of miles out at sea, or use an “environmentally sound” treatment system. It tasked the California State Lands Commission with monitoring vessels for compliance.

California has since enacted a complex system of regulations: In 2003, the Marine Invasive Species Act expanded the scope of Lempert’s legislation. Three years later, the Legislature required the commission to set limits on organism concentrations in ballast water; these “standards of performance” were implemented in 2022. While the standards allow minute levels of organisms in the water, the goal is “zero detectable living organisms” by 2040.

Several federal laws also aim to protect U.S. waters from creatures like the golden mussel.

Penalties for breaking ballast management rules have been modest. At the state level, violations have resulted in 24 fines in the past six years, totaling just over $1 million. Federal fines are rare, with just nine penalties issued amounting to about $714,000 in the EPA’s Pacific Southwest region since 2013.

Commission officials said “the frequency of noncompliant discharges … has dropped dramatically since our enforcement regulations (with penalties) were adopted in 2017.”

Can ballast water be sterilized?

California officials say achieving the law’s goal of zero organisms in ballast water discharged into waterways is infeasible. It would require a network of treatment plants at coastal ports, costing $1.45 billion over 30 years. The shipping industry would face another $2.17 billion in costs for installing systems capable of transferring ballast water to the floating treatment plants.

But Eichenberg said some ships already use commercially available systems that consistently, and by a wide margin, outperform industry standards. He said the state’s failure to require that vessels use the most advanced treatment systems available — technology capable of nearly sterilizing ballast water — has culminated in the golden mussel’s arrival.

“Something like this was bound to happen eventually,” he said.

State and federal performance standards — modeled after international standards — limit the concentration of living zooplankton-sized organisms, like mussel larvae, in ballast water before discharge to 10 per cubic meter. For smaller organisms, allowances are higher.

But even in ballast water that has undergone treatment in approved systems, zooplankton concentrations can be off-the-charts for reasons not always clear, according to Hugh MacIsaac, an aquatic invasive species researcher at the University of Windsor in Ontario, who has studied the spread of the golden mussel in South America and central China.

A close-up photograph of a digital caliper measuring a mussel shell, displaying a reading of 27.64 mm on its screen. The caliper grips the mussel shell horizontally, and several other mussel shells lie scattered on a yellow surface nearby. The caliper is labeled "Fisher Scientific" and shows both millimeter and inch measurement units. — Golden mussels, measured at a state lab, have been found in several Delta locations. Photo by Xavier Mascareñas, California Department of Water Resources

Treating ballast water doesn’t necessarily work. A study in Shanghai found up to 23,000 zooplankton-sized organisms per cubic meter in the ballast water of half of ships sampled, MacIsaac said.

Ruiz, at the Smithsonian research center, said the study’s sample size of 17 ships is too small to be representative and that such high concentrations are abnormal in the United States. “We sample vessels here, and that’s not what we see coming into the U.S.,” he said.

Ship operators have shifted radically in the past 20 years “from no management to a nearly complete use of open-ocean exchange to, now, an almost complete transition to ballast treatment technology,” Ruiz said.

Attention turns to federal rules

The federal government, not state agencies, will soon become the key player in ballast management. That’s because new EPA rules, which are likely at least 18 months away from full implementation, will preempt state regulations.

The new rules — which state officials will help enforce — will keep the existing standards for organism concentrations, but prevent states from implementing their own rules that exceed federal standards. For example, California’s goal of zero detectable organisms in ballast discharge will be nixed.

Nicole Dobrosky, the State Lands Commission’s chief of environmental science, planning and management, said states can petition the federal government for changes to the rules.

Shippers welcome the shift to national rules that align with international standards, said Jacqueline Moore, Long Beach-based vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association.

“An international industry by nature, the maritime community always appreciates consistent standards across the board, and across the ocean in this case,” Moore said. “It’s much easier for everyone.”

“We have the technical ability to efficiently remove or kill organisms that are trapped in a tank of water. For half a century federal law has required EPA to …protect the environment and public health — yet EPA still refuses to do so.”
Environmental groups in a letter to Biden

But the change of regulatory oversight concerns Marcie Keever, the oceans and vessels program director with Friends of the Earth. She said that to date the State Lands Commission has been the more active enforcer.

Preempting state laws with federal standards that she says are too weak “will essentially give the shipping industry a free pass to pollute…These shipping companies are self-reporting pollution instances, and no one is doing anything about it except for the state.”

In 1973, the EPA exempted ballast water from the Clean Water Act. Eventually forced by court rulings to comply with the act, the agency released its newest standards in October for limiting organism concentrations in ballast water.

Keever said the EPA is not setting the bar as high as it should.

“We’re still basically at the same place we were at 20 years ago,” Keever said. “The EPA has never set what we see as the best available technology for ballast water discharges.”

More than 150 environmental groups made similar claims in a 2022 letter to President Joe Biden, arguing that the technology exists now to almost entirely sterilize ballast water.

“[W]e have the technical ability to efficiently remove or kill organisms that are trapped in a tank of water,” they wrote. “For half a century federal law has required EPA to use that ability to protect the environment and public health — yet EPA still refuses to do so.”

The EPA disagrees with the criticism. Joshua Alexander, press officer with the agency’s Region 9 San Francisco office, told CalMatters that “the EPA concluded that these standards (in the new rules) are the most stringent ones that the available ballast water test data can support.”

Can anything stop the mussel invasion?

October’s discovery of the golden mussel in California is being treated urgently by state and federal officials.

The creatures have wreaked havoc on water supply and hydroelectric facilities in South America, and they are spreading rapidly through central China. In the Great Lakes, invasive zebra mussels cause $300 to $500 million in damages annually to power plants and other water infrastructure — the types of impacts officials in California hope to avoid.

Tanya Veldhuizen, the Department of Water Resources’ special projects section manager, said officials are considering the use of chemicals to remove the creatures from pumps, intakes and pipelines of the massive State Water Project, which transports water to farms and cities.

Several scientists told CalMatters that with most nonnative species, eradication is only possible early in the game — meaning management officials often have one shot at success.

Biologist Andrew Chang, who works at the Smithsonian research center’s Marin County field lab, noted an old adage in invasion ecology — containing the spread of a nonnative species is like trying to put toothpaste back into a tube. “The more time that passes, the process of putting the toothpaste back in the tube gets messier and messier,” Chang said.

University of Windsor’s MacIsaac thinks California may be on the cusp of an unstoppable mussel invasion.

“This is an enormous problem for your state,” he said.

More about water

‘Immediate threat’: Mussel invades California’s Delta, first time in North America

October 31, 2024November 5, 2024

Prop. 4 passes: Californians approve $10 billion for water, wildfire, climate projects

November 5, 2024November 6, 2024

Read the full story here.

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The blazes burning across the Los Angeles region are not only devastating property and lives, but also fueling political argument over how to fight the fires, with President-elect Trump blaming state officials for a dearth of available water supplies. A social media brawl began on Wednesday after Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADPW) efforts to fill three 1-million-gallon storage tanks left some Pacific Palisades fire hydrants high and dry. Extreme water demand had surpassed the speed with which the higher-elevation tanks could be replenished, according to LADPW. Trump soon after took to Truth Social, blaming the insufficient supply on Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), whom he accused of blocking efforts to pump more water from Northern California to the Los Angeles region. But experts maintain that moving more water in this manner would be impractical from an infrastructural perspective, as well as wholly unnecessary. "Would that have made any significant difference in terms of what we're experiencing right now with these forest fires and the damage they're creating?" asked Kurt Schwabe, a professor of environmental economics and policy at University of California Riverside. "I would say no," he told The Hill, noting that reservoirs statewide are currently in good shape. "There is this level of dryness in Southern California, but you're not going to irrigate all the forests." Trump on Wednesday night called for Newsom to resign, following up on an earlier post in which he slammed the governor for failing to sign a declaration that would have "allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way." The governor's office quickly decried the accusations as "pure fiction," writing on the social platform X that "there is no such document as the water restoration declaration" and that Newsom "is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need." Trump was likely referring to water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (the "Bay-Delta"), which supplies drinking water to nearly 27 million residents through the State Water Project, according to the California Department of Water Resources. But the City of Los Angeles actually gets much of its water elsewhere, with about 38 percent of drinking water in 2023 — the most recent year with data available — coming from the Los Angeles Aqueduct, according to LADPW. The Aqueduct shuttles water from the Owens River Valley in the Eastern Sierra Nevada to the city, rather than from the Northern California Bay-Delta. Another 9 percent of the city's 2023 drinking water came from local groundwater and 2 percent from recycled wastewater, while 51 percent was imported from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Only 30 percent of Metropolitan's water originates in the Northern Sierra, as 20 percent comes from the Colorado River and 50 percent form a mix of other resources. On Wednesday night, Newsom announced that the state was mobilizing up to 140 water tanker trucks to help fight the Eaton and Palisades fires. The 2,500-gallon vessels were joining about 23 that were already on the ground, according to his office. In the same announcement, his team noted that "the state started tracking this weather event closely over the weekend and began prepositioning resources on Sunday." The governor, his office added, is in constant touch with local, state and federal leaders, including President Biden. Earlier in the day, Biden had approved Newsom's request for a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration, which made federal assistance available to bolster emergency response costs. Daniel Swain, a University of California Los Angeles climate scientist, addressed the issue of preparedness in a webinar the same day, noting that "there was a lot of pre-positioning of resources, which likely saved lives." "This event scared people as much as a week before it occurred in terms of the weather forecasting world," he said. "In fact, it is possibly only because of those dire prognostications that things weren't even worse." "I am pretty sure there are people who are alive right now, who would not have been alive, had those pre-positioned resources not been in place," Swain added. Nonetheless, Trump followed up with additional criticism on Thursday morning by denouncing the "gross incompetence by Gavin Newscum and Karen Bass," referring to the mayor of Los Angeles, while adding that "Biden’s FEMA has no money — all wasted on the Green New Scam!" The Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) has authorized the use of federal funds to assist California in combating multiple fires in the Los Angeles area, and said it is making assistance available to people impacted by the blazes. As far as pumping more water from north to south is concerned, Schwabe, from UC Riverside, stressed that doing so "would have had virtually no impact on what we're experiencing right now." Instead, Schwabe described the ongoing crisis as "a local preparedness issue," in the sense that cities need to account for the "changing climate regime" in the future planning and placement of resources. For example, he suggested that rather than just relying on three tanks in Pacific Palisades, officials could form partnerships with adjacent communities that might be able to share tanks during times of crisis. Repositioning and diversifying supply sources, Schwabe explained, would be more strategic than increasing the amount of water flowing to the region. He likened the situation to a household fire, in which the residents have only one garden hose and ask their neighbors to borrow another one. Similar to that household, Schwabe explained, Southern California will probably need "more garden hoses and bigger garden hoses" in the future. Patrick Reed, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University, echoed these sentiments, identifying a division between two elements of Los Angeles's water management: the "crisis response and long-term planning." The Pacific Palisades water tank situation was "reflective of the extraordinary demands" that local officials were facing in managing the immediate crisis, Reed said in an emailed statement. "Long-term planning of city water supplies would not typically assume they are going to be used to fight large-scale wildfires in heavily populated urban areas," he continued. The "surprising shocks" caused by the ongoing fires and resultant stress on water usage surpass any "peak demand scenarios that would be used for planning," according to Reed. Nonetheless, he emphasized that such a short-term disaster can bring long-term impacts, in the form of lives lost and property damages. Los Angeles, Reed explained, is coping with a situation in which known climate change risks "have manifested into the type of extraordinary extreme event that we are struggling to address in our long-term planning.” Going forward, Schwabe said that he could see the value in pausing to reevaluate crisis management plans under new climate scenarios — not just in Southern California, but in other areas across the U.S. West. "If you're not, you're assuming that these are just kind of really infrequent events, and you're basing your decisions on past data and evidence about climate," he said. "Then you're likely going to continue to make these mistakes," Schwabe added.

Water

Climate

Forests

In Los Angeles, Water Runs Short as Wildfires Burn Out of Control

By Jackie Luna, Kanishka Singh, Jonathan Allen and Hannah LangLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Crews battling multiple wildfires that raged across Los...

By Jackie Luna, Kanishka Singh, Jonathan Allen and Hannah LangLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Crews battling multiple wildfires that raged across Los Angeles on Wednesday were up against a near-perfect storm: intense wind, low humidity and, most troubling for residents, inadequate supplies of water to contain the blazes.Los Angeles authorities said their municipal water systems were working effectively but they were designed for an urban environment, not for tackling wildfires.On Wednesday, at least three major blazes burned in LA County communities simultaneously, including a fire in the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood, an area west of downtown LA dotted with multimillion-dollar celebrity homes built along steep canyons.Jay Lund, a professor in civil and environmental engineering at the University of California Davis, said city water tanks are typically designed to be able to put out localized fires, not widespread fires like the ones blazing in Los Angeles."It's not a matter of there's not enough water in Southern California, it's a matter of there's not enough water in that particular area of Southern California just for those few hours that you need it to fight the fires," Lund added.Across the county, more than 70,000 people were ordered to evacuate and at least five were left dead as fierce winds fueled the fires, which have burned unimpeded since Tuesday. The fires have destroyed hundreds of buildings."A firefight with multiple fire hydrants drawing water from the system for several hours is unsustainable," said Mark Pestrella, director of Los Angeles County Public Works.Janisse Quinones, CEO and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said the demand for water to fight fires at lower elevations was hampering the city's ability to refill water tanks at higher elevations.The lack of water hampered efforts particularly in Pacific Palisades, an upscale coastal enclave where a wildfire has consumed nearly 12,000 acres (4,856 hectares).The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said that in advance of the windstorm, it had filled all available water tanks in the city, including three 1-million-gallon (3.8-million-litre) tanks in the Palisades area.The area had exhausted the three water storage tanks by early Wednesday, Quinones said in a press briefing."We're fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is really challenging," she added, noting that Pacific Palisades experienced four times the normal water demand for 15 hours as firefighters battled the blaze.The department urged Angelenos to conserve water, and said it had deployed 18 water trucks of 2,000 to 4,000 gallons since Tuesday to help firefighters.Lund said the nature of the fires was such that it was nearly impossible to arrange enough water in advance."If everything catches fire at once, there's not going to be enough water for everybody," he said."There's just no way that you could fit the pipes to work to move that much water across that area in a short period of time."Gregory Pierce, director of the UCLA Water Resources Group and an adjunct professor at the Department of Urban Planning, said the fires were unusually intense even by Southern California standards. His brother's house burned down, he said.He said the problem was not a lack of water so much as the difficulties in rapidly getting large amounts of water to a specific point where it was needed, which would entail major investments in power and infrastructure.Sanah Chung, a Pacific Palisades resident who spoke to a reporter while hosing down hedges and trees in his front yard, said governments at all levels should have been more proactive in preparing for the fires."There must be some things we can do to try to mitigate this. Please. Fire hydrants are empty. Firefighters are doing everything they can, but we need to do things more proactively before," Chung, 57, told Reuters.(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, Jonathan Allen and Hannah Lang in New York and Jackie Luna in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank McGurty, Paul Thomasch and Lincoln Feast.)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

Water

Government

Sustainable

People are flocking to Florida. Will there be enough water for them?

Climate change, a development boom, and overexploitation of groundwater are draining the Sunshine State.

While wading through wetlands in the headwaters of the Everglades, where tall, serrated grasses shelter alligators and water moccasins, agroecologist Elizabeth Boughton described one of Florida’s biggest environmental problems: There’s either too much water, or too little. An intensifying climate, overexploitation of groundwater, and a development boom have catalyzed a looming water supply shortage — something that once seemed impossible for the rainy peninsula. “It’s becoming more of an issue that everyone’s aware of,” said Boughton, who studies ecosystems at the Archbold Biological Station, a research facility in Highlands County, Florida, that manages Buck Island Ranch. The ranch — a sprawling 10,500 acres of pasture lands and wildlife habitats across south-central Florida — both conserves water through land restoration while also draining it as a working cattle ranch. “You kind of take water for granted until you realize, ‘Oh my gosh, this is something that is in danger of being lost.’” An entrance to Buck Island Ranch, a 10,500-acre working cattle farm in Highlands County, Florida (left). Agroecologist Elizabeth Boughton gestures to a grassy field of bluestems and sedges on Buck Island Ranch on December 16, 2024. Ayurella Horn-Muller / Grist Like many places worldwide, the dwindling freshwater availability in Florida is being exacerbated by a warming atmosphere. Sea levels in the state’s coastal regions have already risen dramatically in the last few decades, pushing salt water into the groundwater and creating an impotable brackish mixture that is costly to treat. A report released last summer by the Florida Office of Demographic Research found that the state may experience a water supply shortage as soon as this year, with the problem escalating in coming decades. Florida’s groundwater supply is the primary source of drinking water for roughly 90 percent of the state’s 23 million inhabitants, and is vital for agricultural irrigation and power generation. Public use by households, municipalities, and businesses accounts for the largest depletion of groundwater in Florida, while agriculture is responsible for at least a quarter of withdrawals. Virtually all of Florida’s groundwater comes from the state’s expansive network of aquifers, a porous layer of sediment that underlies the peninsula. When it rains, water soaks into the ground and gets trapped in gaps in the rock formation — providing an underground reserve of fresh water that humans can tap into with wells and pumps. But most Floridians live near large population centers — like Miami and Tampa — where the freshest aquifer water is too deep to access or too salty to be readily used. With nearly 900 people moving to Florida each day, the Sunshine State is only continuing to grow, fueling a thirsty rush for new housing developments. Clayton Aldern / Grist The future of the state’s water has long looked bleak, and a ballooning population is ramping up an already-fraught situation. As leading policymakers push pro-development agendas and parcels of agricultural land are sold to the highest bidder, districts are grappling with political demands to advance water permits — often at the cost of conservation. The Florida Office of Demographic Research report found that the conservation, infrastructure, and restoration projects necessary to tackle the incoming water deficit will cost some $3.3 billion by 2040, with the state footing over $500 million of that bill. But according to Florida TaxWatch, a government-accountability nonprofit, current water projects and sources of funding aren’t coordinated or comprehensive enough to sustain the state’s population growth. Global warming has changed the nature of rainfall in Florida, increasing the likelihood of extreme rain events in swaths of the state, but even torrential bouts of rain won’t replenish drained aquifers. Intensified hurricanes are primed to overwhelm wastewater systems, forcing sewage dumps that contaminate the water supply, while rising sea levels and floods further damage public water infrastructure. Higher temperatures that drive prolonged droughts also contribute to groundwater scarcity: Florida has experienced at least one severe drought per decade since the onset of the 20th century. Such climate-borne crises are already playing out across the United States, and beyond. Roughly 53 percent of the nation’s aquifers are drying up as global water systems confront warming. Compared to places where groundwater is already severely depleted, like California, Mexico, and Arizona, Florida has the luxury of one of the highest-producing aquifers in the world, and more time to prepare for a dearth of supply. Still, adaptation will be necessary nearly everywhere as the Earth’s total terrestrial water storage, including groundwater, continues to decline. Record-breaking temperatures and crippling droughts wrought havoc on the world’s water cycle last year, according to the 2024 Global Water Monitor Report. Read Next Three-quarters of the world’s land is drying out, ‘redefining life on Earth’ Ayurella Horn-Muller Sarah Burns, the planning manager for the city of Tampa, home to half a million people on the Gulf Coast, expects water supplies will continue to face a number of climate pressures like drought and rising sea levels. But one of the biggest factors in the city’s looming water crisis is population growth — and a hard-to-shake abundance mindset.“It’s all a challenging paradigm shift,” Burns said, noting that many Floridians take pride in lush, landscaped lawns, and an influx of new homes are coming to market with water-intensive irrigation systems pre-installed. This can be seen in Tampa, where roughly 18 percent of residents use 45 percent of the city’s water. Tampa already exceeds its 82 million-gallons-per-year limit that it can directly provide without paying for more from the regional provider, at a higher cost to residents. In November 2023, the Southwest Florida Water Management District instituted a once-a-week lawn-watering restriction for households in the 16 counties it oversees, including Tampa. In August 2024, the Tampa City Council voted to adopt the measure indefinitely — a move that has already saved them billions of gallons of water. Read Next The US is finally curbing floodplain development, new research shows Jake Bittle As newcomers flock to affordable housing within commuting distance of Tampa, once-rural areas are also feeling the squeeze. The nearby city of Zephyrhills — known for a namesake bottled water brand — has temporarily banned new developments after it grew too quickly for its water permit. “Water is the hidden problem that really forced our hand,” said Steven Spina, a member of the Zephyrhills City Council who proposed the restriction. “It is ironic that we’ve been known as the ‘City of Pure Water’ and then we’re in this predicament.” Perhaps nowhere in Florida is more at the crux of water issues than Polk County in the center of the state. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2023, more people moved to the former citrus capital than anywhere else in the nation, with subdivisions “springing up right and left.” The growth the county is seeing “has created a need to find additional water supplies,” said Eric DeHaven, the executive director of Polk Regional Water Cooperative. The entity was created in 2017 after Polk County’s worries became so acute it prompted more than a dozen local governments to assemble to protect their future water supplies. Between 2002 and 2015, Polk County’s farm bureau reported 100,000 acres — about a third of the county’s total agricultural land — had been converted for development. Florida farms are a crucial part of the U.S. food system, but struggles from extreme weather, citrus diseases, and economic issues are driving farmers out of the industry. By 2040, half of an estimated 1 million additional acres of developed land could take the place of farms. This would further magnify Florida’s water supply issues — in 2020, public utilities were estimated to have overtaken farming as the biggest drain on groundwater resources. A farmworker checks the irrigation lines in an orange grove in Polk County, Florida, in 2022. Paul Hennessy / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images “Imagine if you own this land,” said Boughton, the agroecologist. Farmers are hard-pressed to refuse offers as high as six figures per acre from developers, she noted. ”There’s so much pressure from urban development … that opportunity is hard to pass up.” “Things are definitely changing because of climate change, but it’s also because of this,” said Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson, gesturing to new houses built across the road from her home in Columbia County, in the north of the state. As the founder of the nonprofit Our Santa Fe River, Malwitz-Jipson has spent the last two decades fighting to save the crystal-blue springs that feed it. Collectively, the state’s springs have lost over a third of their historic flow levels, while 80 percent are severely polluted. Last year, Blue Springs, a locally beloved landmark, collapsed entirely. Because these springs are directly connected to the aquifer, says Malwitz-Jipson, such signs are omens of declining groundwater health. Local water-conservation activist Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson points to watermarks on a tree on the banks of the Santa Fe River near her home in Florida. Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist It wasn’t long ago that she devoted years to try and prevent the renewal of a controversial 1 million-gallons-per-day groundwater permit for bottled water for BlueTriton — formerly a subsidiary of Nestlé — in nearby Ginnie Springs. When the effort failed, she switched gears and now advocates for adding conservation conditions to water-use permits. A 2019 report from the Florida Springs Institute found that restoring springs to 95 percent of their former flow levels would require curbing regional groundwater extractions by half. Matt Cohen, a hydrologist who leads the University of Florida’s Water Institute, says the “devil is in the details” when it comes to permitting. “It’s very much where the implementation of those kinds of sustainability measures would be realized,” Cohen said, adding that state water management district authorities often convince applicants to use “substantially less” water. Other measures include offering alternatives to groundwater, like using reclaimed wastewater and surface water supplies. Coordinating such conservation efforts across Florida’s five water management districts and 67 counties will take a concerted statewide approach. In November, the state unveiled its 2024 Florida Water Plan — which includes expanding conservation of agricultural lands, and investing millions into infrastructure and restoration projects, such as Buck Island Ranch — among other measures. Still, in the face of the population boom, advocates like Malwitz-Jipson wonder if it will be enough. “I don’t know why the state of Florida keeps issuing all these permits,” she said. “We are not ready, y’all. We do not have enough water for this.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline People are flocking to Florida. Will there be enough water for them? on Jan 8, 2025.

Water

Climate

Agriculture

Curbing irrigation of livestock feed crops may be vital to saving Great Salt Lake: Study

Reducing the amount of water used to irrigate livestock feed crops may be critical to revitalizing the dried-out Great Salt Lake, a new study has found. About 62 percent of the river water heading toward the lake in Utah ends up rerouted for human purposes, with agricultural needs responsible for almost three-quarters of those diversions, according to the study, published on Tuesday in Environmental Challenges. The Great Salt Lake, which relies on mountain snowpack for much of its replenishment, is the biggest saline lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth largest on the planet, the study authors noted. The lake is also a biodiversity hotspot that houses critical habitats and sustains migratory birds, while also supporting area jobs and $2.5 billion in economic activity. At the same time, however, the basin has lost more than 15 billion cubic yards of water over the past 30 years and is now getting shallower at a rate of 4 inches per year, the researchers explained. And as the lake has gotten smaller, area residents have increasingly endured respiratory problems from the fine particulate matter kicked up in the form of wind-carried dust. “The lake is of tremendous ecological, economic, cultural and spiritual significance in the region and beyond,” co-author William Ripple, a professor of ecology at Oregon State University, said in a statement. “All of those values are in severe jeopardy because of the lake’s dramatic depletion over the last few decades." About 80 percent of the diverted agricultural water ends up irrigating alfalfa and hay crops, according to Ripple. With the goal of helping stabilize the lake and bolstering its restoration, Ripple and his colleagues proposed decreasing human water consumption in the area's watershed by 35 percent. These conservation efforts would include a sizable reduction in irrigated alfalfa cultivation, fallowing of irrigated hay fields and taxpayer-funded incentives for farmers and ranchers who lose income as a result. To draw their conclusions, the researchers employed data from the Utah Division of Water Resources to create a comprehensive water budget for the Great Salt Lake basin for 1989 through 2022. They found that on average, water flowing into the lake trailed behind consumption and evaporation by 500 million cubic yards per year. Going forward, the authors suggested a range of conservation measures, including crop shifting, decreasing municipal and industrial use, and leasing water rights from irrigators. But they emphasized that farmers and ranchers who lose income should be compensated at a cost ranging from $29 to $124 per Utah resident per year. “Revenues from growing both irrigated alfalfa and grass hay cattle feed in the Great Salt Lake basin account for less than 0.1% of Utah’s gross domestic product,” Ripple said. “But our potential solutions would mean lifestyle changes for as many as 20,000 farmers and ranchers in the basin.” Yet although the necessary adjustments would be significant, Ripple stressed that they would not be insurmountable. “With the right policies and public support, we can secure a sustainable future for the Great Salt Lake and set a precedent for addressing water scarcity globally," he added.

Water

Conservation

Sustainable

Suggested Viewing

Remnant

An experimental short film from Iran.

Experimental

Culture

Water

Mayday Terranean

Mayday Terranean is a documentary film portraying the problems of the Mediterranean Sea as well as the beauty it still has to offer. Scientists, conservationists and activists from countries around the Mediterranean Sea talk about the topic, their relationship to ocean conservation and shed light on the story of this wonderful but endangered place.

Water

Pollution

Conservation

Waterbackpack PAUL

The world is a paradise but more and more natural and manmade disasters happen. A German professor and his students invent a tiny but ingenious bag to clean polluted water after environmental catastrophes without chemicals and electricity to save people's life.

Water

Pollution

Solutions

The Great Divide

Twenty minutes outside of Visalia, amidst the seemingly endless rows of citrus trees, Yolanda Cuevas packs enchiladas with shredded chicken for her husband Benjamin, their adult daughters and two teenaged grandchildren in her modest single-story home. Their house is the first one off the main drag, one of 83 lining the two crumbling roads that comprise the tiny town of Tooleville. Yolanda must wash the tomatoes for the salsa first in the sink and then again with a splash of clean water from a 5-gallon jug. The process is arduous, and though she’s resigned to do it, she’s not happy about it. Along with Tooleville’s several hundred other residents, Yolanda’s family has survived on bi-weekly delivery of water to their homes for the past 12 years. It’s an annoyance for the family, and it’s expensive for the State of California, which has been paying for the replacement water since the discovery of Chromium-6 (the same chemical featured in Erin Brokovich) in the water. The simpler solution would be to consolidate the town’s water system with that of its larger, affluent neighbor to the west, Exeter. And for this purpose, Yolanda has become a reluctant activist, attending community meetings in Tooleville and lobbying for consolidation at Exeter’s city council meetings under the expert guidance of Pedro Hernandez, an organizer with the Leadership Counsel. While Exeter has resisted the consolidation since it was first proposed, organizers like Pedro feel that this could be the year Exeter finally succumbs to the growing community pressure and brings Tooleville into the fold. The decision will echo around the Central Valley and across the state, as hundreds of similar community water systems find themselves in a nearly identical predicament.

Water

Activism

Documentary

Chicas al Agua

You can count the number of female paddlers in Futaleufú, Chile on one hand... and they want to change that. After many riverside matés and floating conversations, the idea to create a kayak course for local teenage girls was hatched. Thanks to a committed group of women from around the globe, what started as a dream is now an inspirational contribution to the local community.

Water

Youth

Inspirational

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